


Video et Taceo

by Amand_r



Category: Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-24
Updated: 2011-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-15 01:19:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amand_r/pseuds/Amand_r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth keeps Raleigh at a distance, but little letters always seem to slip through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Video et Taceo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rm](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=rm).



> Written for Yuletide 2007.

**1585:**

 _'Noli me tangere; for Cæsar's I am,  
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.'_

That he'd written the poem to her on palimpsest had given her pause. Elizabeth turned the tiny paper over in her hand again and again, wondering when she'd last received anything on second-hand paper. And for it to have this on it was no less than...thrilling.

Raleigh had probably thought that he was being clandestine and charming. The former he most certainly was not; all well-trained eyes had seen Bess moving through the courtiers to her, handing over the scroll in its little ribbon. As for charming, well. She glanced at the poem again before rolling it up and tucking it in the sleeve of her dress, just over her wrist. Walsingham raised his eyebrows and she straightened. Bess snickered quietly, just enough for her to hear. Oh yes.

"And France agrees to this?" she asked quickly. She had been paying attention. Really, she had.

***

"Shall I send a message to Captain Raleigh?" Bess said softly as she poured the water into the tub. The lining fluttered away from the wall to tickle Elizabeth's leg, and she shivered. Bess set the pail to the side and leaned over Elizabeth's shoulder, the curls on her temple sticking to her forehead. Her hand skimmed the water to test the temperature, ever the monitor of her Mistress's health.

Elizabeth tapped the scroll on her nose and smelled it: smoke and leather surely, from the boat, and her own perfume, soaked into the palimpsest from an afternoon of being carried inside her sleeve.

"I shall speak with him myself," she said, ignoring the glance from Bess that she was not supposed to see in the far mirror. In the absence of Sir Robert Dudley, Elizabeth hadn't really shown any interest in the passing males of the court, except to accept gifts, poetry or praise, or to use them as an amusing verbal trifle in an otherwise dull evening. Raleigh was fairly good at this; he provided plenty of fodder for her wit.

"Many think that Sir Wyatt wrote this for my mother," she said quietly. The rustle of gowns stopped suddenly behind her for a few seconds before they resumed, bringing the pail of hot water. Elizabeth twirled the scroll in her fingertips before unrolling it again with one hand. Raleigh's script was wild, chaotic, as if it had been written with the entire furore of the high seas, or simply, on a boat, actually. It was cramped. Constrained. Elizabeth didn't remember Wyatt the elder; his son had been another matter altogether.

"Does it sadden you?" Bess asked.

Elizabeth watched the pour of water and wondered if it did indeed sadden her somewhat. Or fill her with longing. Or fill her with desire. Perhaps when one had to think on it so, the thing became less than anything.

"The poem?" she asked, fanning herself with the paper to waft the scent of it to herself. "Not very much. It was, after all, a rumour."

Bess trailed a hand in the water, using one finger to make swirls. "Rumours can contain truth, can't they?"

Elizabeth sighed. "You're certainly full of cheek today."

Bess disappeared from view, but she could see her in the mirror. "I'm sorry, My Lady."

The paper slipped from Elizabeth's fingers onto the water, floating at the surface like a skimming bug before she flattened it with the palm of her hand, pushing it down into the depths of the tub where it met her skin. She felt it slide up the inside of her thigh and held it there, closing her eyes.

"I want a few moments, Bess," she said, and wondered when her orders had started to sound more like requests. After a few seconds she heard the wail of the rusty hinge (Francis kept all the hinges noisy-- better for the guards to hear all the movement) and the dull thud of the door, leaving her, for all intents and purposes, alone. The paper made its way up farther, her fingers wooing where words could not, a redness blooming in her cheeks as if caused by the rough winds of the sea.

***

 **1589:**

At evenfall she retired early when the tiny scroll was dropped in her hand. Anne didn't even pretend to hide a smile when she left the Privy chamber to fill the bathing tub in the Bedchamber. Elizabeth was waiting to be undressed, and she didn't even bother to read the little message in her hand, this time obviously crafted on better paper than the last few.

Raleigh had been in the Tower for quite a while now. It hadn't been her idea, in all fairness to herself, but rather the actual Way Things Were Done. Raleigh was a dear friend, or so Elizabeth liked to think, but one simply didn't blatantly disregard rules of marriage and court. If she had let this one go, who knew what might have happened next?

She allowed Margaret to show her the folio some playwright had sent her, an adaptation of Dr. Faustus. She twiddled with the quill as her hand hovered over a few more orders of confinement for the late Mary's ladies-in-waiting, wondering if she mightn't send them back to Spain and France and be done with it. Walsingham had wanted to have them executed, and they probably would be, but for now Elizabeth teetered on the edge of a fantasy in which they could rejoin their families, hale and healthy.

Raleigh hadn't sent anything in months; he most certainly couldn't with any sense of safety, since Walsingham checked all of the messages coming from the Tower. Bess must have smuggled it out for him to give to her, and then it had exchanged so many hands that by the time Elizabeth held it in her palm, raised it to her nose, she smelled nothing of Raleigh, nothing of Bess, with the perfume her husband had most assuredly got for her from some foreign place that smelt of jasmine.

The first pregnancy, Bess had handed the baby off to a nursemaid and come back to court, but the second one, when the news of the marriage had come out, and it could no longer be hidden, Elizabeth hadn't been able to publicly ignore it, instead forced to banish Bess and lock up Raleigh. She had to secretly admit, though most of her was never secret, that she rather enjoyed that last bit, just for a minute or two.

Until the scrolls of poetry started arriving again, smuggled in her ladies' hands and slipped into her own in the manner of passing a feather along the skin. Sometimes they showed up on her bed at night, an intrigue that she knew would make Francis red all over and spluttering and conducting interrogations of everyone who had access to her rooms.

But they were from Walter. Bess was banished, but she still had friends below stairs. Elizabeth would rather not see any of them suffer for wanting to do a Lady a favor.

At first, with the arrival of the first one, she had recognised it by its scent and the cramped writing and known that it would break her heart to read it, to look out the window to the Tower, its top lights dim in the far distance.

But the folio was done, and she had unrolled it and rolled it up without looking at the contents twice already. Better to be done with it, so she could sleep in peace.

 _'With wisdomes eyes had but blind Cupid seene  
then had my love my love for ever bene  
but love farewell though fortune conquer the  
no fortune base shal ever alter me.'_

Elizabeth crushed the paper in her hand, so loudly that Annette looked up from her herbs with a 'My Lady'? "Roger!" she barked, wondering when her voice had got so frightening or croaking. The gentleman usher scrambled for the door; she could hear him scratching the carpet with his shoes as he slid in front of the door, but by the time it was open and his form was crouched low to the floor, he showed no sign of actual disarray.

"I want Walsingham first thing in the morning, and Lincoln from the Tower."

Roger clutched his hat in his hand and tried to look up without looking up. "Roger," she said wearily, but then decided against any further action. In the end, it was fruitless to address any servants about how they might feel more comfortable in Her presence. "First thing."

Roger pulled up a bit, and bowed as he backed towards the door. His stockings drooped a bit on his left leg. "Yes, Your Majesty." He tripped over the corner of the carpet, and Elizabeth wondered if he mightn't be a better jester than a footman.

Annette took her gown from over her head, and she held out her arms for her dressing gown, all the while crushing the small scroll in her palm. In her head she heard the sound of lutes and a shawm.

"Margaret," she said under her breath. It sounded old. When had she got so old?

"My Lady?"

"I'll be wanting a moment at the desk. Heat the wax and call for a messenger."

The sleeves of her gown hid her hands from view when she reached out and tossed the crumpled paper in her bath water. The ball alighted, rings rolling out from its landing. Annette brought the last of the pails from the fire, pouring its steaming contents in; the paper was caught in an eddy and sank, its ink melting to the surface of the crushed ball like oil on silk.

The desk waited, and when she sat, took the quill in her hand, she knew exactly what to say. She was never at a loss for words. She would be forceful and merciful. She would be a loving prince. She would convey all of her sympathy and disappointment and condemnation in this one piece of parchment.

Elizabeth hugged the quill to herself a little, not sure if she mightn't be afraid to loose her hand and write. Behind her, Annette noisily draped her gown on the manikin and prepared it to be sent back to the wardrobe. The dust from her face paint had settled on her sitting desk and Elizabeth wondered who used to wipe it down. It had probably been Bess. A few sharp words would probably ensure that the next time she returned from her Privy chamber, this room would be spotless. Part of her wanted the reminder of Bess's absence.

Somewhere far from her window, there was a shout of men, probably playing dice in the corridor outside, under the garret. And somewhere in this many-chambered desk she had papers of pardon.

But first: the quill moved in sibilant scratches and hisses over the paper, which soaked up the ink she offered, singing a quiet tune, one of romance and new worlds, of wistfulness, the darkness of all that she wanted to finally say.

 _'Ah silly pugge wert thou so sore afraid,  
mourne not (my Wat) nor be thou so dismaid,  
it passeth fickle fortunes powere and skill,  
to force my harte to thinke thee any ill.'_

END


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